I Learned to Show Off My Ass Among Men

I’ve always liked my ass. Round, firm, perky, with that shape that owes nothing to the gym because I was never an athlete, but that still makes people stare a second too long. I like showing it off. I like walking knowing there are a pair of eyes behind me that won’t look away, and I like it even more when those eyes work up the nerve to do something.

The first person to tell me seriously was Vera, my wife. We won each other over like that, staring at each other’s asses at a party where neither of us had gone looking for a partner. She has one of those bodies that seem designed to drive anyone crazy, and I, in her words, had “the best ass she’d ever seen on a man.” That line stayed with me. We went home together that same night and we haven’t stopped since.

Vera understood before I did what I really liked. She loves kneeling behind me and parting me with her hands while she buries her tongue inside, while I in turn slide down between her legs and work her slowly, feeling how wet she gets against my mouth. Then she slips in a finger, two, three, opening me little by little, and whispers in my ear with that low voice that melts me.

—You like this, don’t you? —she whispers—. You like it when they do it to you.

And yes. I do. There’s no point denying it at this stage.

We brought back a strap-on from a trip to Berlin, and Vera learned to use it as if she’d been doing it her whole life. She puts me face down, grabs my hips, and fucks me until I lose track of where I end and the bed begins. She leaves me shaking, undone, too weak even to talk. Those nights we sleep wrapped in each other, and the next day it hurts to sit, but I’m smiling the whole time.

But Vera wasn’t the first to enjoy what I’ve got. To get to her, I had to go through a lot of hands, mouths, bodies. And each one taught me something.

***

The first was Darío, my desk mate at school. We were fifteen, sixteen, that age when everything burns and no one really knows why. He used to sit beside me, and one day, right in the middle of class, he slid his hand under the desk and squeezed my leg. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t pull away either.

What happened after that was madness I still can hardly believe. Under that same desk, with the teacher explaining something on the other side of the blackboard and thirty kids copying from the book, Darío guided my head down and I pulled his zipper down. I did it fast, my heart pounding, terrified in a way that was almost as big as the urge. No one noticed. Or if they did, no one said a word.

—You’ve got a gorgeous ass —he told me that afternoon, already at my place, when my parents weren’t home—. You have no idea what you do to me.

Darío was the one who took my virginity. He did it slowly, patiently, in my own bed, on a summer siesta while the fan spun overhead and not a leaf moved outside. It hurt and I loved it in equal measure, and when it was over I lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking I had just discovered something I would never be able to give up again.

We repeated it everywhere. In the back seat of a bus, hidden under a jacket. Against a tree, on a barely lit street in the neighborhood, where anyone passing by could have seen us. That possibility of getting caught turned me on more than anything else. That’s when I understood something about myself that took years to put into words: it wasn’t enough for them to want me. I needed to be seen.

***

Then came Bruno, a neighborhood guy I got on with great. One afternoon the three of us, Darío, Bruno, and me, slipped away to a river in a little town on the outskirts of the city. It was one of those places where the water runs brown and gentle between the willows, and where you don’t cross paths with a soul for miles.

We went into the water and it immediately became clear we hadn’t come to swim. Bruno had big hands and laughed at everything, and Darío already knew me by heart. Between the two of them they took me to the bank, onto the warm grass, and it was my first threesome. The first of several.

I can’t explain what it feels like to be in the middle of two bodies that want you at the same time. It’s total surrender, letting yourself be handled in a way that doesn’t resemble anything else. Bruno kissed me while Darío opened me up, and all I did was receive, lost to myself, with the sun hitting my back and the sound of the river in the background. Afterward the three of us were sprawled out on the grass, breathless, looking up at the treetops, saying nothing because there was no need.

***

I met Iván by chance. He was the cousin of one of my cousins, one of those tangled family ties nobody ever fully understands. He showed up one weekend in my uncles’ village, where I spent my vacations, and it was enough to see him get off the motorcycle for my breath to catch. Tall, broad-backed, with a smile that seemed to know exactly the effect it had.

He offered me a ride and I climbed on without thinking. I grabbed his waist first and then, using the curves as an excuse, I started sliding my hands down to the bulge showing through his jeans. He said nothing. He sped up. I could feel his abs tightening under my fingers every time he changed gears, and by the time we got back to the house I couldn’t think about anything else.

We did it in the shower that same afternoon, with water pouring over us and the noise drowning out everything else. Iván pressed me against the cold tiles and took me from behind, unhurried, holding me with one arm crossed over my chest as if he were afraid I’d fall. I almost fell in love with him in those few hours. I still remember the steam fogging the mirror and his rough voice telling me in my ear he’d never seen a body like mine in his life.

***

And then there was Facu, the village grocer’s boy. The country candy, we used to call him. He had skin toughened by working under the sun and clear eyes that contrasted with everything else. We invited him to watch a game at my uncles’ country house one January afternoon, and half an hour later nobody was looking at the TV anymore.

The three of us ended up, Facu, another guy, and me, naked at the edge of the pool, on the heat-retaining tiles that held onto the day’s warmth. Water splashed us now and then and nobody bothered to dry off. It was a slow threesome, sticky with sweat and chlorine, the kind that stretches out because none of you wants it to end. Facu had a way of touching that was shy at first and then wild, as if only then he’d given himself permission.

What I didn’t expect was what happened the following afternoon.

***

My cousin Tobías showed up the next day, just arrived from the city. Tobías had been swimming since he was a kid and had the kind of body swimmers get: broad shoulders, a narrow waist, that V-shaped back you don’t get any other way. I had always looked at him more than I should, and he had always made a point of acting like he didn’t notice.

That afternoon, though, something broke in me. I don’t know if it was the high from the previous days, the heat, or simply that I was tired of pretending. I started with a brush as I passed by, a hand on his shoulder that lingered longer than normal. Tobías didn’t move away. I tested him with another caress, on his back, on the nape of his neck, and to my surprise he responded, came closer, looked for more.

—We shouldn’t —he said, but he didn’t move.

—I know —I said, and kept going.

I turned him into boiling water, his hormones a mess in that body built by years in the pool. Facu joined in when he understood what was happening, and the two of them enjoyed me that afternoon, separately and at the same time, while I completely lost control. I let myself go without restraint, without guilt, without thinking about anything other than the moment. It was the first time I dared to do anything, the first time I stopped asking permission, the first time I understood that pleasure owed no explanations to anyone.

Later, when I went back to the city and life went on, those afternoons stayed tucked away like treasure. I don’t regret any of them. Every body, every hand, every gaze that lingered on me shaped me into what I am.

***

That’s why when Vera whispers in my ear that I have the best ass she’s ever seen on a man, I smile and think of everyone who thought the same before her. I think of Darío under the desk, of Bruno on the riverbank, of Iván fogging up the bathroom mirror, of Facu on the warm tiles, of Tobías giving in on a January afternoon.

I like showing off what I’ve got. I like being looked at and, above all, I like when they work up the nerve. I learned it little by little, from each one of them, and by now I don’t know how to do it any other way. Let them look all they want, I think every time I walk and feel those eyes behind me. Let them look, and then let them come closer.